I have just heard a reporter on the BBC ‘Newsnight’ show describe the European Common Agricultural Policy as an expensive ‘boondoggle’.
I cannot recall ever having heard that term used in the mainstream British press before. Is that a first?
|
|||||
|
We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people. Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house] Authors
Arts, Tech & CultureCivil LibertiesCommentary
EconomicsSamizdatistas |
18 comments to Was that a debut? |
Who Are We?The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling. We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe. CategoriesArchivesFeed This PageLink Icons   |
|||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||
When the BBC starts describing the CAP as an “obscenity” that will be even better.
Michael,
Actually they stopped only just short of doing that. It was a fiercely critical piece.
David Carr writes:
“Actually they stopped only just short of doing that. It was a fiercely critical piece.”
It was, yes. But really coming from an Oxfam et al perspective.
Had it been really driven by the absurdity of the CAP from the perspective of the poor devils who are funding it (ie us) I might have had more sympathy.
As usual, though, the real motive force behind this piece was the age/class/beliefs of the BBC’s juvenile researchers, ’80s Time Out radical generation editors and their fellow travellers in the pressure groups.
So, yes. Good that it ripped into the EU and CAP. Bad that it did so from such a pious ‘pity the Third World’ perspective.
No, I think the third world perspective actually is the important one here, although the fact is we shouldn’t consider one side in isolation. Abolish subsidies and the rich and poor worlds both win.
The fact is that although those of us in the rich world are paying much higher prices for food than we should be, we actually can afford it. On the other hand, people in the poor world are dying because of it, and their economic development is being dramatically hindered because of it. The number one thing we could do for Africa is abolish agricultural subsidies. Most other things we could do for Africa are ineffective and/or expensive. Abolishing agricultural subsidies would be both very effective and it would actually save us money.
Michael Jennings writes:
” The number one thing we could do for Africa is abolish agricultural subsidies”
Which presupposes that we should “do” something for Africa.
I have spent my entire life being told this. No one has ever convinced me why. Few have even tried – they seem to believe it is axiomatic.
I must lack the gene that predisposes to post-colonial guilt, or something.
If we’re going to point out that the CAP is a terrible subsidy that hurts Africans, we should also point out that the proposed Tobin tax, (no, I didn’t make up that website name!) a subsidy as it effectively subsidises worthless third-world currencies.
Why should we deny people the right to engage in business transactions as they see fit, even if it means not using pieces of crap like the Zimbabwean dollar or the Kenyan shilling?
Good heavens! I’m just impressed that the BBC has used a good, old-fashioned folksy American colloquialism like “boondoggle”.
On the other hand, I have had a great deal to drink.
David,
One of the Spectator’s columnists (whose name, predictably enough, escapes me the moment I try to remember it) occasionally characterised the Bank for European Reconstruction and Development as the “Boondoggle for Remuneration and Disbursement”. Now, I think the Speccie meets the definition of mainstream press . . . although perhaps I should hedge my bets and ask advance forgiveness from them for lumping them in with the rest of those rascals.
So, is boondoggle perhaps a faux Americanism, like “methodology”?
“Is that a first?” asks David Carr. I certainly hope it’s the last. So far, no-one has said what the bloody hell a “boondoggle” is, though I’m not sure I want to know. So much for Newsnight reporters.
David,
I suspect the report you saw has more to do with the allout war that is going on between the Beeb and the Prime Minister. You must remember that when factions within the Left go to war, all that matters is winning, and by whatever means there are at their disposal.
The use of the Yankee colloquilism “Boondoggle” is there more to tie PM Mosley-Blair to failed policies, which in the eyes of the Beeb includes American Foreign Policy.
Mosley-Blair could quite easily cut the Beeb down to size but will not since he dosen’t have the guts to carry the can if it blewup in his face…….since there would be no one around to pass the buck onto.
Tony H,
A “boondoggle” usually refers to a useless project created or run by the government……….although the private sector is not immune.
Tony H writes:
So far, no-one has said what the bloody hell a “boondoggle” is,
It’s a term Mr Rothbard is particularly fond of using, or anybody at the Mises Institute, meaning an unnecessary or wasteful project or activity, or the act of participating in an unnecessary or wasteful project or activity.
As in:
“The Senator got a thousand defence workers a boondoggle contract on the XYX aerospace system. They were boondoggling for three years, on this contract, before technology advancements in other areas persuaded the Senate to scrap the project. There were rumours that a secret Senate committe knew the project would be a waste of time and money, from the outset, but these malicious rumours are unconfirmed. The Senator has since been returned from his State, with a majority of just 999 votes.”
Just think Euro-Fighter project.
Or try this Mises.org search.
Mr Carr writes:
I cannot recall ever having heard that term used in the mainstream British press before. Is that a first?
It’s funny you should post this piece, but as I’m still recovering from reading four Rothbard books in quick succession, leaving my Terry Pratchettesque octarine magic colour levels pretty high, with regards to this particular word, I DID notice it last week, being used by Mr Neil Collins of the Telegraph, describing Cancun:
It was the boondoggle of the year, with ministers from 146 nations, hundreds of NGOs and thousands of journalists filing expenses from a Caribbean beach resort, while contriving to furrow their brows and talk about “development”. Britain sent the sanctimonious Trade Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, who told the BBC she was “rather surprised” when talks collapsed.
As I wished to spare the world of yet another reference to the Great Mr Rothbard, I didn’t dare take it any further! 🙂
But isn’t it GOOD, that the word is spreading! 😉
G Cooper: There is poverty and hunger in the world. I don’t like this. I would like to see it go away. If I could do something that would actually help fix it, I would. However, the history of trying to do this through aid is massively counterproductive, and has created dreadful bureaucracies full of rent-seekers like everywhere else. The only way to fix it is for poor countries to establish decent systems of property rights and build functioning economies, that can trade with the rest of the world.
Perhaps I should have worded what I said by saying that to stop doing things that are actually hindering the development of the poor world is likely to be far more effective than doing anything active. It so happens that removing agricultural subsidies and trade barriers is in our interests as well as theirs. However, I don’t think that this should be the only reason for supporting their removal. The moral imperative that comes from the damage they are doing in the third world is a very good reason for action by itself.
Michael Jennings writes:
“The moral imperative that comes from the damage they are doing in the third world is a very good reason for action by itself.”
I’m sorry. I understand the humanitarian motive and I wholly approve of free trade. Equally, I quite agree about the pernicious effects of ‘aid’.
However, I am no more convinced that Africa’s problems will be ameliorated by freeing its agriculture, than I am that Mars is going to land in my back garden next Wednesday week.
Some of India’s problems might be eased. In parts of Latin America it might work, too. But you specifically mentioned Africa and I’m afraid that raises my hackles. It has become the emotive war cry of the Left – a sort of liberal shibboleth. ‘Anything in the name of Africa’ – in other words, it’s all our fault.
So yes: remove the trade barriers. It can’t hurt. But it won’t solve Africa’s problems and I refuse to feel the sort of knee-jerk guilt that such an appeal is (usually – perhaps not in this case) designed to evoke.
Surely, as fans of self-determination, you should be behind the ability to help others achieve self-determination themselves. Especially if it’s actually going to save you money in terms of taxes from your own pocket.
From what I’ve just read, it seems that you don’t like something the Beeb does which is critical of the CAP – even if you’re against the CAP – because you’re critical of the Beeb. That just seems a little like cutting off your nose to spite your face…
It shouldn’t be about woolly liberal post-colonial guilt, or about your own strong reactions to that, but about what is the right thing to do. However you look at it, in freeing ourselves from the shackles of the CAP, we may be in with a chance of helping others, to start the ball rolling on levelling the playing field and giving people a chance of determining their own futures, expanding their own liberties.
Surely handing people the chance for economic and political freedom is something you would agree with?
“Boondoggle” usually means a “corrupt
public/private partnership. A sweethart deal.
An illicit wealth transfer.”
I usually associate it with a kind of crooked
real-estate development project where the
public till is used to enrich one or more developers.
a boondoggle, originally, was a rope of sorts made from strips of scrap leather and rope plaited together by a cowboy. since such a rope couldnt really be used for anything the main purpose of creating it was to give the cowboy’s employers the impression that he was actually doing useful work when in fact he was just making himself look busy. someone during the new deal, and i wish i could remember who it was, described the wpa as a boondoggle. since then any government program whose main purpose is to spend the taxpayers money on a project of doubtful utility whose main purpose is to give a politician’s constituents / supporters / friends something to do when they are in fact doing nothing at all is called a boondoggle. a boondoggle is often defended by the prodigious use of gobbledygook, which is language that no one can understand, that being, of course, the whole point of gobbledygook.
Christopher Fildes in City and Suburban in the Speccy is the fellow who is most responsible for the popularlisation of the word. As the column is syndicated in the Telegraph and has been for years this explains a lot. There again it is stuck in the buisines pages, so not sure how many people actually read it.
Pitting their guilt against their greed…. I love it!